


Snakes and Stones

by objectlesson



Category: Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: But I hope I had you at snake girls, F/F, Fame, Magical Realism, Snake Girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 03:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: If you call a girl a snake enough, sometimes she becomes one. Her legs lengthen and fuse, her pupils shrink to slits. She gets colder and colder, until she has to spread herself on the warm cement beside the pool, soaking in heat, sipping gin and tonics to warm her blood so she does not turn to ice and shatter to bits.





	Snakes and Stones

**Author's Note:**

> My dear friend gave me the prompt "snake girls" and this pairing is really the most interesting place to explore such a thing so!!! Here they are!! It was super weird and fun to explore Eleanor's interiority and I really want to do it again so, um, send me ideas. Also no one call the police on me for this fic please.

—

If you call a girl a snake enough, sometimes she becomes one. Her legs lengthen and fuse, her pupils shrink to slits. She gets colder and colder, until she has to spread herself on the warm cement beside the pool, soaking in heat, sipping gin and tonics to warm her blood so she does not turn to ice and shatter to bits. 

—

You meet her because your fake-boyfriends are fucking. 

She’s better at this than you are, though. She’s slender and blonde and her smile is like a cat’s smile, wide and placid and smarter than everyone else in the room. Your hands shake the first time you meet her, and hers are cool as she hugs you hello, cheek pressed to your hair. She’s taller than you expected. She’s sadder. You can almost smell the tears on her as she presses you close, a note of salt between the rose perfume and Tennessee Whiskey. 

“Hi, I’m Taylor,” she says, even though everyone here knows her name. She’s the most famous person in this room, more famous than your fake boyfriend, more famous than your fake boyfriend’s boyfriend. She’s America’s sweetheart and you’re one of Britain’s five most loved boys’ beard. You feel like dishwater next to the ocean. Grey and fog paling besides the cerulean glitter beneath the sun. 

“Eleanor,” you murmur, smile faltering like it always does when you’re nervous. “Delighted.” 

“Oh, that accent, oh my god. It’s so cute,” she exclaims, opening her mouth, lips forming a red O. “I just love the accent.” 

It makes you blush. One of the last times you do such a thing, before the world bites you and its venom stings in your veins and you can only speak in hisses.

Luckily, Taylor is fluent. 

You begin to spend more and more time together, out of necessity. Half the time no one sees. The paps never arrive, the fans never swarm, but your fake boyfriends wanted to have a date so the two of you are carted along like accessories, like handbags. She sidles close to you in every diner booth and at every bar, and your body feels hot, even if hers is always cool. 

“You’re too pretty for this line of work,” she tells you one night, the red of her lips leaving a mark on your hand as you reach out, cover the shape of her mouth with your palm. She’s not supposed to talk about this sort of thing in public but she does it anyway. Smoothly, easily, like she's meant to. It’s how Taylor does everything. 

“Oh my god. Aren’t I supposed to be pretty? They have believe I’m a popstar’s girlfriend,” you answer, leaning in close so you can whisper into her ear. You think _I’m close enough I could kiss her neck_, and it’s such a wild, reckless thing to think it feels dangerous so you think it again. You wish you were dangerous, that your greatest sin was something worse than lying. That you struck, instead of simply sitting there coiled, letting girls half your age sling barbs at the blank canvas they’ve hidden you behind. 

She giggles, leaning into you. “Sure. But you’re not _background_ pretty. You’re spotlight pretty. You don’t deserve to sit there as an afterthought, the period to his sentence…you could be famous.” 

“For what?” you scoff. You are not a singer, you are not a model. You are not even an _actress, _ though all you do is act. You are just a student, scraping up good money from a good gig while it lasts, in case you ever fall in love and have children to support and spoil. 

“Anything!” she says, sipping her drink sloppily. It spills over her hand and you reach for a napkin. Instead you end up with your wrist encircled in her long fingers and her red lips pressed to yours. 

You realize Taylor is kissing you. You realize somewhat after the fact you’re kissing back. You have your hand in her necklace—your fake boyfriend’s boyfriend’s necklace—and her knees are slotting in between yours and she tastes like Tequila, like cherries, like hotrods, like America. You lick the sweetness from her mouth and your heart races and when she pulls back, she blinks with her reptile’s eyes, licks her lips with a forked tongue. 

“How about we get out of here?” she hisses. Fanged incisors dimple her lower lip and something you haven’t felt in a very long time clenches between your legs. You stare at the paper airplane nestled between the modest but plump curves of her tits, and you realize you _want_ this. You want to break the rules. You want to feel something. 

“Sure,” you say breathlessly, letting her take your hand and pull you up off the barstool. 

The two of you leave American money next to your half empty glasses, leave your fake boyfriends kissing in whatever dark corner they’re kissing, and she pulls you into a dizzying kaleidoscope of Hollywood lights. 

At her apartment, she bakes for you. She pushes you up against the counter and peppers your neck in lipstick marks, and the air around you smells like sugar and chocolate as she says, “I need it to be warm in my apartment, all the time, or I’ll die.” She says it like she’s joking but you know, you _know_ that she’s not. You know it the same way you know yourself, the way you have sometimes felt yourself freezing in the middle of a sea of lies, of loneliness.

“Do you—do you date, outside of the things you have to do? Because they don’t let me. It’s written into my contract,” you confess, winding your fingers through her soft blonde hair. You’re drunk, and the words come out slurred, but she seems to understand. 

“I do. dating publicly actually helps me get away with what I want to do in private,” she explains, eyes flashing slyly from where she’s pressed into the ditch of your neck, against the crazy thud of your pulse. “Things like this.” 

You gasp as her hand makes her way up your thigh. It’s cold, and that shouldn’t feel good, but it does. Because it’s so _different _from the cold you’re used to: the cold of never being touched, unless it’s by a gay boybander in front of a camera to sell a story. The cold of being touched by a girl who knows _exactly_ what you’re going though is like plunging into ice water. You feel alive.

Your heart races as you ask, “But do you _date? _Or is it just—like this? Drunk hook-ups with other liars?” 

She smiles a sad smile. “There’s another girl, sometimes. A more permanent one. I love her. But we’re all doing the same thing, you know. The faking. You’ll see…I know you think you’ll get out eventually, we all did once. We all wished the stupid world would change or we’d be successful enough and we could just live how we want to live. But that’s not how it works.” 

You gasp as she cups your cunt firmly, hungrily. “Can I?” she asks, looking at you through her lashes. 

“Your girlfriend won’t mind?” you ask, spreading your thighs boldly. 

Her fangs dig into her lips as she twists her mouth into something between a grimace and a mocking smile. “She’s not my girlfriend. She comes, she goes, and she’s gone, right now. No idea if she’s coming back. Sooo,” she singsongs in that Nashville Angel’s voice, squeezing gently, thumbing over the soft skin on the insides of your thighs as you melt, hot and molten into her palm. “I have wine. And I baked cookies. And I have a huge California king bed. We could have a sleepover, Eleanor.” 

You reach for her face with your hands and bring her close to kiss her, bite at her, mind a mess of static and hunger and that terrifying rush of finally, _finally_ being seen. Of finally telling the truth. “I supposed I could spend the night,” you whisper as you pull away. 

“That _accent,” _she hisses, slithering closer, hooking her fingers under the lace of your knickers. “I could eat you up.” 

So she does, and you fall apart on her forked tongue, choked in her coils, constricted to bits. And when you wake up in Taylor’s bed, there are scales in her sheets, stuck to your skin. They glitter like green sequins very high up on your thighs and for a moment, you think they’re coming from you, and that’s not as terrible a fate as you might have thought. 


End file.
